


The Space Between Stars

by L_awlietxoxx



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Regency, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, And sees everything that might have been, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben waits in the world between worlds, Dark Reylo, Devoted Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Luckily Rey always finds him, Multiverse, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, So devoted they find their way to each other in every last universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23572078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L_awlietxoxx/pseuds/L_awlietxoxx
Summary: In the World Between Worlds, Ben Solo waits. Between each star, he and Rey live a thousand lifetimes together.He yearns for only one.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 21
Kudos: 113





	The Space Between Stars

**Author's Note:**

> After suffering some major writer's block, this thing grabbed me and wrote itself in two days flat. It was a large-scope idea but I hope it all ties together on the page the way it did in my head!
> 
> A bajillion thanks to [KyloTrashForever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KyloTrashForever/pseuds/KyloTrashForever) for helping me figure out a structure that made sense AND the gorgeous mood board. Where would any of us be without this queen?

“Why are you here?”

The hour is past counting. _The Falcon_ is silent – the shipful of Resistance fighters given over to the hold of sleep. Rey has only barely emerged herself – voice fuzzy at the edges while her eyes blink to focus her vision.

Not that she needs to see. Not that she needs to ask, either.

Even in sleep, she sensed him.

“I think you know.”

His voice brushes against her skin, the intimacy of their bond whispering along her senses. It’s warm in her room, but Rey shivers all the same.

Ben stands mere feet from her bed. Dressed in plain black sleep clothes, long hair mussed – he seems to have been pulled from his own rest into her presence.

He appears perhaps too calm, too agreeable to the intrusion. But Rey notices how his lips go stiff, how his eyes shift a shade darker in their focus on her as he says: “I think you know you called me.”

“I… I _wouldn’t…_ ” Even in her own throat, her voice falters. Rey cannot say what happened while she slept. Whether she unconsciously wrapped her mind around the pulsing livewire of their bond and pulled him heedlessly to herself. Whether her dreams had twined themselves around the press of his fingertips to her own, or the blaze of his eyes in a throne room on fire.

“You can’t lie to me, Rey.”

Not so long ago, the words would have twisted with threat. Now, they caress – dark, unnerving, and undeniable.

Rey pulls her sheets up against her chest. She watches Ben’s eyes track the movement. She notices his fingers twitch towards fists.

“Even if I called you…” Rey intends the words as a challenge, but they leave her in little more than a whisper. “Why did you come?”

Ben says nothing for a long time. She meets his eyes. Then, she watches his eyes trace slowly down and then across her. She watches the way he swallows – the way not a single inch of his body concedes to move or falter. He stands rigid. His gaze trembles.

“Because,” he whispers, voice nearly lost to the hum of hyperspace. “Neither of us are ever alone.”

~

_Why are you here?_

Ben – or whatever bodiless form he now inhabits in this nameless space – hears the voice from a distance. It is somehow familiar, even sure as he is that he never heard this voice in his waking life.

He cannot answer. Not only because he’s not sure if he still possesses the mouth or lips requisite for speech, but also because he does not know.

The last thing he remembers is the sight of her hazel eyes fixed on him – brimming with love and tears. The last thing he felt was her lips.

How could he have fallen so far, so quickly? How could any force in the galaxy have parted him from her?

What is this place of silence and empty, where all he sees are the rushing lights of phantom stars?

How long will he be trapped here?

Why?

~

“Why are you here?”

The words come out half-strangled. Rey hiccups around a sob, wiping at tears angrily. She’d just finished packing up all the clothes she kept from him, all the photographs and gifts. And now he’s here again – standing in her living room, looking broken and determined all at once.

She can tell in the way his feet turn in, Ben is fighting the impulse to rush to her. To dry her tears. But in his face – the hurt and regret and frustration there – he knows this is too important for thoughtless impulse.

“I said I never wanted to see you again.”

She’s angry at herself for letting him in, but when she’d looked through the peephole and seen him standing there - wringing his hands and expression so helpless and forlorn - there’d been nothing else to do.

“I know you did, Rey.”

His voice is cautious and overly careful. His hands extend before him though his feet don’t move – fingers splayed as if unable to stifle the urge to reach for her even from across the room.

“And I know why you did. I understand.”

Rey lets out a brittle laugh. She wraps her arms around herself, the action making her look even smaller than usual in her oversized sweatshirt and leggings.

Ben has never yearned for anything in his entire life as much as he aches to hold her right now.

“Why do I doubt that.”

“You have every reason to. I know I was… presumptuous. I know I didn’t communicate like I should have – that what I did was… inexcusably disrespectful.”

“Understatement.”

In any other circumstances, Rey would have been overjoyed about Ben’s promotion. Making partner and heading his own office of the firm? At 33, it was an insane accomplishment. Only the office he’d be running is in London, and Ben had gone so far as to look at apartments and visa laws before telling her when they’d be moving and _wasn’t it wonderful?_

He hadn’t even _asked._

“I know you’ve been hiding a ring in your closet for the past month. You might as well go fucking return it!” was the last thing Rey had shouted in the ensuing fight, before storming from his apartment.

Ben always had a bad habit of being… a little wrapped up in himself. Her friends thought him brusque and egotistical, but Rey knew him better. Despite his Ivy League education and his six-figure paycheck, Ben waged a constant battle against crippling self-loathing. She’d met his parents and she understood. In their two years together, Ben had told her a handful of times how much it meant to him that she stayed. That previous girlfriends had all seemed to find him too much work.

Rey thought they’d all been fools. Because for as much as Ben could sometimes be unintentionally thoughtless or blind to Rey’s feelings, he loved more intensely than Rey could ever have imagined.

She knew there would never come anything like the way Ben looked at her sometimes over his morning coffee – like she was some miracle unexplainable by science, and yet as necessary to his existence as the gravity keeping his feet on the ground. Nothing would compare to the hesitant tenderness in his eyes when he’d once shown up at her door at midnight with flowers in his hands.

“I’m sorry I’ve been working so much lately. Would you… like to get away with me this weekend? We could go skiing.”

But for _this_ – Rey would need a whole lot more than flowers. She didn’t think anything could ever redress the shock and insult she’d felt at his assumptions. And so she’d been gathering his things from her apartment – unable to bear looking at them and crying as she went.

“I have a whole _life_ apart from you, Ben. What did you think I would do about my job? My friends and family? My apartment? You didn’t think about me for even a second.”

“I-I know, Rey, I completely mishandled everything. As soon as I heard about the promotion and the move, I just… I imagined it all so easily. Moving with you, getting our first place together, even arguing with you about the furnishing…”

This makes Rey cry even more, because she can imagine all those things too, just as easily. She wants to fight with him about teacups and color schemes and blinds versus drapes, then once they’re completely exhausted collapse into their new bed together and with their bodies, make the sweetest amends.

She wants it all _so badly._

Ben gulps when he sees her fresh tears and hurriedly corrects himself. “But I know I was wrong. Those were nice fantasies, but that’s all they were. Moving to another country – let alone, moving in with me – those are huge choices. And I know, you’d be sacrificing so much. For me to assume you’d want that – to make major life plans involving you without putting your decisions and your desires at the center of them… that’s not the behavior of a good partner.”

Rey sniffs, wiping her eyes again with the heel of her hand.

“You know this isn’t just about this single incident, right?”

Ben sighs, nodding slowly.

“This is about our future, too,” Rey forces herself to go on, regardless of how much the words scare her. “This is about whether I can trust you to put me first, when it matters. This is about whether you really understand that I have my own needs.

“Ben – as glad as I am that you trust me, that you can see a future with me where you’re happy – you need to understand that I have to be happy apart from you, too.”

Ben looks vaguely panicked, mouth opening and closing silently. He finally manages, voice as neutral and open as he can manage, “….apart from me?”

“I don’t mean _without_ you. I mean… that my life is bigger than the part of it we share. Maybe I do want to move in with you, to see you every morning and every night. But… I am more than just the part of me that makes you happy.”

Ben is nodding, but remains silent. He crosses his arms, shifts his weight. His gaze remains downcast as Rey leaves the room for a moment in search of a tissue to wipe her eyes.

She watches him from the doorway, as he chews the inside of his cheek. She can see his hands tensed along his arms, can trace the strain of effort in the line of his shoulders.

Then he turns. He looks determined – resolved of something, even as his hands remain curled in loose fists at his side, minutely trembling.

“Rey. Do I make _you_ happy?”

Taken aback, Rey is silent for a long beat. She has no idea how to follow his line of thought. She takes in how clear and honest his eyes are. She takes a deep breath, and decides to trust him for now.

“You do, Ben. You really do.” She stares at him some more, and despite everything, the affection wells up so easily.

“I love being the one to make you smile after a long day at work. I love the way you make love. I love when you leave me orange juice and toast on the nightstand, when you have to leave early. I love how you can pick me up so easily. I love the way you look at me when you think I can’t see.”

He is taken aback by that – vulnerable and unsure for a split-second. Then he recovers, sure and focused on her again.

Rey’s heart feels as if it’s beginning to expand in her chest, perhaps with something akin to hope.

He clears his throat, looking down to his feet and clutching the denim of his jeans between his fingers for a moment before he looks up at her again.

“You already know most things about me, Rey. You know that I’m… insensitive sometimes. That I’m not always the best listener. You know that I work too much because I never think I’m good enough. You know that I can get single-minded about things, to the jeopardy of my relationships.”

He clears his throat again. Unconsciously, Rey takes two steps closer into the room.

“But I think there’s something maybe you don’t know. I’m… different, with you, Rey. It’s not from any particular thing you do or say, though I know that it hasn’t always been easy for you, dealing with my bad days, and you always seem to know just what to do or say.

“What I mean is… I _feel_ different. Just from being with you. I never knew that… that loving someone could feel like this. That it could be the most powerful thing I’ve ever felt, even though it’s not about me at all.”

“I… I’m not sure I understand.”

Ben breathes out in a rugged rush. He combs fingers through his hair and tries again.

“If this promotion had come at any other time, with anyone else… I would have been sure she’d leave me. I know it’s not the right way to think – I know I’d still be making assumptions, but what I mean is… _I’m_ different, because of you. I was hardly even thinking about the job. I kept thinking about…. about taking care of you. It’s stupid, I know, and I still went about it all wrong because I was an idiot and didn’t talk to you right away, but…”

He takes a deep breath. There’s something vaguely embarrassed to his expression, but he presses on. Rey hangs on every word.

“I looked up window boxes, Rey, because you said you’d always wanted one. The houses I looked at were only in Notting Hell or Kensington, because that’s where everyone has window gardens. I… looked up apartments with nooks and fireplaces, because you liked them so much at that ski lodge we went to. I made sure the place had big windows, because you always like to sit in the sun reading on weekends. I looked for a place with two bathrooms and a tub, because you like to take long baths and hate being interrupted.”

Without meaning to, Rey’s feet are bringing her closer to him. His soft, hesitant words wrap around her and inch by inch, urge her nearer. He looks apprehensive, unsure what to make of her gradual approach.

“Go on, Ben,” Rey whispers, her words thin as wisps of smoke.

He swallows, and does.

“I found a place with an entryway big enough to store your bike. I looked for extra bedrooms, so we could have a guestroom where your friends or family could stay. I only looked at kitchens with gas stoves, because I know you hate cooking on my electric one. And I made sure the building was pet-friendly, because you’re always saying how much you want a cat. I even…”

She is so close now, she can see the nervous, embarrassed bob of his throat as he hovers over the next words.

“You even what?” she whispers, gently urging.

Again, his hands tremble to reach for her.

“I even looked up nurseries and schools.”

Rey swears they’re breathing as one now – the profound, slow rise and fall of her chest matching the rhythm of his. They’re not touching, but their gazes are locked together in the deepest of embraces.

“I could see it all so clearly, Rey. I could see you there. And I… I believed I could give you all of it. I know I’ll never deserve you, especially after what I’ve done now. I know I still have so much to learn about being a good partner. I know it was selfish – letting myself get carried away in fantasies without asking you first and foremost what you wanted.

“But if… if I _do_ make you happy. If I can. Then please, let me try to do this right. Let me fight for you. For the life I’d like to make with you, aside from the part we share. If you decide it’s what you want.”

“ _Ben_ ,” she breathes, and finally, finally reaches for him. Just her fingers, twining between his.

The brush of contact visibly moves through him. He breathes out in relief, his hand clutching hers as if he couldn’t find air properly without its presence there.

He keeps looking between her eyes, so hopeful and yet a trace of doubt and apprehension lingering there, in the slant of his brow.

She reaches up to him, her hand landing along the back of his neck and fingers twirling in the ends of his hair.

She has always so adored his hair. Always loved holding his head to her chest in the early mornings and simply stroking her fingers through it. She loves washing his hair for him, when they shower together.

The idea of never doing it again is… simply grievous.

His free hand hovers along her arm. She can tell by the strain in his expression - he is barely resisting crushing her close.

Rey strokes his hair back from his face.

“Will you show me the place you found? I want to look at it together.”

Ben nods, his head tipping slightly towards her touch.

She goes on, “We’ll have to talk about it. And I’ll need to see if I’d have any job options there.”

He’s looking at her with eyes very wide now. He’s searching her face frantically, looking for a sign whether he’s interpreting correctly.

Rey’s lips tip upwards into an unmistakable smile. She lifts onto her toes, preparing for the considerable journey up to his lips.

“And Ben, I hope you didn’t return the ring.”

~

Rey’s mouth is twisted into a snarl, the glow of her green, double-sided saber harsh against her features.

“Why are you here?”

Kylo’s footwork matches hers step for step. In the dark ruins of an ancient temple, in a time immeasurably distant from the rise and fall of a Galactic Empire, they circle each other with green and red sabers humming at their sides. Between their two bodies, primed and taut for combat, the Force hums and sizzles.

“I was drawn here. The same way you were.”

Though maskless, his face is cloaked in shadow. Rey narrows her eyes, trying to see him clearly. She reaches out – through the sparks igniting in the air between them, through the bond that crackles and howls within them.

She tries to sense his intentions – his movements, his objectives, even his yearnings.

He teases her – easing his wards open just enough to lure her in. But all he unveils to her are images of herself through his eyes.

Beautiful and terrible. Armored and then in turns completely bare.

Rey charges with a roar.

Too much unrefined aggression and not enough control – Kylo parries and sidesteps easily. Rey stumbles for a split second before righting her footing and whirling to face him again. Berating herself, she focuses on reining her breathing back under control. She straightens her shoulders, spreads her feet.

Even through the shadows, she sees Kylo’s smirk illuminated in the red glow of his cross guard blade.

“The Jedi order have been extinct for centuries. Why do you still mimic their archaic principles?”

“There hasn’t been a Sith for centuries either. Yet, why do you wield that crude, broken blade?”

She twirls the hilt of her weapon in her hands. Kylo shifts into a defensive stance, his eyes tracking the whirling arcs of Rey’s double swords.

“This crude blade will shear that ridiculous weapon of yours in two. Then you’ll have to fight me on equal footing for once.”

Her eyes flash.

“I’d destroy you with my bare hands.”

She charges – this time in a targeted storm of speed and aggression.

Kylo blocks her first cut, then whirls, his saber arcing through the air to block the opposing thrust of her second blade. Rey spins her weapon once, then unleashes spiraling thrust after thrust.

He dodges, blocks, and counters. They have fought so many times, felt within each other’s minds so often, that Rey cannot keep him from sensing the flow of her movements and attacks. Their bond pulses with its own life now – beyond their individual control as it brims with all the power and passion they have fed to it.

She knows where his foot will land before it moves, but by the time she slices her blade there, he has seen ahead. He blocks, then surges into an attack in one fluid, rising motion. Rey chokes on adrenaline as she sweeps her weapon in a defensive spin, only barely throwing his blow wide.

He’s smirking again – in the shadows of this ancient, long-abandoned temple where the Force whispers in dark corners and the stone trembles with raw energy released by their battle.

“My bare hands have already done that.”

Rey clenches her jaw. She immediately wraps an iron band of control around her mind, willing the focus and discipline to keep the errant memories at bay. To keep seeing him just as he is in this moment: Her enemy. A foreboding threat cloaked in all the dark passions and lusts that oppose all she is.

Kylo takes a slow, purposeful step towards her. She raises her weapon, though his remains lowered at his side. She looks into his face, into the calm essence there borne of age-old violence, desire, and insatiability.

_Accept it, Rey. We are destined to never escape each other._

His voice echoes within her mind, cutting her control loose.

The images rush in – half real, half imagined, but she knows each of them true.

Her own fingers peeling off his leather gloves. The warmth of his bare hands sliding along her inner thighs. His mouth against her breasts. The dizzying breadth of his body between her legs. The blood seeping from his bottom lip where her teeth ravished.

Rey raises her weapon on instinct as her breathing escalates. She knows his hands, knows his touch, knows his voice. Even if the memories are not all her own or haven’t yet come to pass in this world; she knows, without a doubt, each memory belongs to them.

Her eternal counterpart. Her opposite, and her balance.

He stands close enough to strike now. Still, his weapon hums at his side. He gazes at her steadily, her green sabers reflecting in his eyes. When she raises her head to look at him, all antagonism has dissolved from his being. But his eyes – they are on fire with the same inferno that burns within her in each and every existence.

She does nothing to stop him when he reaches for the hilt of her weapon. His hand covers hers around the grip. She looks straight into his eyes again, and the inferno takes her.

On this dying star in the far reaches of the Outer Rim, the foundations of the temple begin to shake apart. Rey sinks close into Kylo’s embrace as his kiss takes her, and she has never felt more powerful.

~

_Why are you here?_

The shapeless voice asks again. Still, Ben has no answer.

How long has he remained trapped in this nothingness? He has lost all concept of time, his being full to the brim with the memories of lifetime after lifetime.

They come to him from between the stars. Images of himself, in distant worlds and alternate realities. Always her face alongside his – smiling, crying, but always, always loving.

In how many worlds is he graced by a life with her? In how many lifetimes has he earned her partnership? And in how many has he been torn from her?

It wouldn’t be so different from this oblivion – Ben thinks. Living without her.

He has no hope. No desires. No intentions. In a galaxy far away – the one where he was born to a Princess and a Scavenger, and fell into darkness until she lighted his way – Rey lives.

That is all. That is everything.

Whether he endures here, or fades away to join the nothing… It makes no difference to the abyss of infinite stars.

~

Kylo circles her in the moonlit clearing, his pace predatory and eyes gleaming.

“Why are you here?”

Rey whirls, eyes wide and heart pounding when she hears the husk of a human voice from the hulking shape of the wolf before her.

She’d had a hunch, and this must mean she was right…

“Because I know it’s you.”

The huge, black wolf stops circling. He stands still before her, piercing eyes fixed on her as he crouches low to the forest floor. He crooks his head. His maw doesn’t move, but she hears his voice clear as day.

“Little girl, what do you think you know about me?”

Rey swallows hard, gathering her courage.

“I know this isn’t the first time we’ve met, or even the second. I know it was you who saved me from those wild wolves.”

Rey had been sure she was done for. She hadn’t heeded the warnings of the townspeople, to her own peril. The beady eyes of three wolves had appeared between the trees lining the path, and she’d frozen, not sure if running would only quicken the attack.

But then a giant, dark shape had launched from the trees, crashing into the midst of the three predators. Rey hadn’t turned back to look as she fled, but she heard a howl filling the night.

The wolf’s tail skims back and forth along the grass in response to her words.

“And…” Rey chooses her words carefully. The idea is nearly impossible to grapple with even inside her own mind, much less to speak aloud…

She whispers, somehow knowing the wolf’s ears will hear. “…I know it was you, at the market.”

Now, the wolf goes deathly still. His tail freezes, ears flatten, and maw seems to draw back into the beginnings of a growl.

Rey only speaks louder, now.

“It was you. The man in black, who stopped those thieves from accosting me. You helped me up. You said I should be more careful. And then you disappeared.”

He remains there, frozen and crouched in the grass. Rey doesn’t dare to move, nor to look away from him. Gradually, his ears lift again. She watches as his tail makes a single lazy swish back and forth.

“Indeed you should be more careful, little girl.”

He rises now, his massive body lifting to stand straight again. His back nearly reaches the level of Rey’s chest. Even from this distance, Rey can see the boundless strength in his haunches.

“You shouldn’t go seeking out monsters in the darkness of the woods.”

“Except you’re not a monster.”

He stalks closer to her – closing the distance until Rey can see the bits of grey dusted through his fur. Only a few feet away, she watches his muzzle draw back from his teeth just enough for them to gleam in the moonlight.

“Yes, I am.”

His voice is a supernatural rumble. She hears it emerge from his chest, and yet his jaw never moves. His teeth never separate.

To steady herself, Rey makes herself look away from his teeth. She looks into his eyes again, and there – there is what she came here tonight seeking.

His eyes are wild, there’s no denying. But there’s something more as well. Behind the sharp black of the wolf’s pupils, Rey can see the same depth she found in the eyes of the man he’d been at the market.

Not… kindness, exactly. More like intrigue – and a sharp, heated focus she’d been unable to forget.

“Show me,” Rey demands, shocked by her own boldness and utterly not herself –  
transfixed by the wolf’s eyes. “Show me the man within you.”

He releases an unmistakable growl, before the noise tapers off into speech. “There is no man. There is only the wolf.”

Rey balls her fists at her side, determined. She came here with the vow to see the man’s face – to speak with him. Now, she has nearly forgotten all her original intent. She thinks only to repudiate his own judgment against himself.

“Then show me the wolf’s other face.”

He assesses her for what feels like hours. He stands utterly still, his sharp gaze roving up and down her body as his tail flicks occasionally to and fro.

Rey holds her breath. “I came here to find the creature who saved me twice. And to see the face that’s lived in my dreams ever since.”

His tail goes still, his searing gaze riveted on her. Rey doesn’t back down. She’s afraid to even breathe – to do anything at all to disturb the moment of stillness spanning between them, tense and intimate.

She stares straight into his inhuman eyes, meeting his challenge. Proving that she sees more than a beast; that she is not afraid.

Then, he abruptly lifts his great head towards the night sky. He howls once, and the noise seems to take shape in the air. A strange haze suddenly fills the clearing, until Rey has to squint to see anything at all. She loses sight of him, and for a moment, fear threatens. Fear that he has left her here alone - with no way to find the path back home.

The night air begins to clear again. As it does, Rey quickly realizes she is not alone.

The wolf is gone. In the same place stands a tall, broad young man. His black hair hangs long and unkempt, nearly reaching his shoulders and framing a face extraordinarily smooth and youthful.

He is bare, his body strong and sturdy. Rey’s eyes trace the rugged swells of his arms, then down the wide planes of his chest. Somehow, she doesn’t so much as redden when her eyes skim down his abs to the manhood below. It simply fits – beautiful and inexplicable like the rest of him. It’s no more shocking than everything else she’s just witnessed.

“This is what you wanted to see, little girl?”

His voice is markedly gentler, spoken from his human mouth. Rey finds herself momentarily mesmerized, watching his lips shape the words.

“Why do you call me ‘little’?” she quips. “You hardly look older than me.”

She watches one of his eyebrows quirk, amused. A strange thrill runs through her to see his recognizably human mannerisms.

“Trust me. I have lived lifetimes before you were ever born.”

“How long?”

“Two hundred years, perhaps? It’s difficult to say.”

Rey sucks in a breath, stunned. “Are there others like you?”

“Not anymore. Perhaps in distant lands, but the pack and family I once knew have all been hunted.”

“Oh…”

Before deciding to do so, Rey finds herself stepping towards him. His eyes track her, expression puzzled. He remains still as she nears, watching her closely until she stands near enough to touch him. Now, she can see the slim red line of a scar bisecting the left side of his face, running from above his eyebrow all the way down his neck.

There is still something of a wolf in how keenly and precisely he tracks her movements.

Rey finds it sends a strange, hot jolt through her to see that look fixed on her by his dark, human eyes.

“Are you… lonely? Is that why you’ve watched me, protected me?”

“The first time was an accident. Those feral wolves had been challenging my territory. I’d never let them kill on my land.”

“And the second time?”

He takes a deep breath. Rey watches it pass down his throat, watches his broad chest expand.

“The second time… I walked among humans at the market to hear talk of the hunters. To make sure none would try to hunt in this forest. There, I saw you. I saw the thieves cornering you. I couldn’t let my efforts to save you once go to waste, could I?”

“So you did save me the first time. I knew it wasn’t just an accident.”

He seems to bite down on a smile. “Perhaps.”

Just standing near him, Rey can feel his heat. Everything within her itches to touch him – with curiosity and a deeper, darker urge of something else.

She searches her own feelings, and realizes she is not afraid. He’s so much bigger than her even in human form, and there isn’t a soul in the forest with them for miles. These are both facts she knows rationally. And yet, he saved her twice now. After the second time, she hadn’t been able to forget the warmth of his hand when he’d offered it to help her up from the ground. Hadn’t been able to shake the intensity of his eyes, before he’d turned and disappeared.

She doesn’t know if it’s rational or irrational, and frankly she doesn’t care. All she does know is that she feels safe – here with him in the moonlight.

She keeps her head tilted up, watching his face closely as she extends her hand. She brushes her fingertips along his wrist.

She sees his body jolt slightly, even as his expression remains calm. He keeps staring at her as if she’s the most remarkable, absorbing thing he’s ever seen.

Not wasting time to think through just what she’s doing, Rey gives in to her fascination. Her gaze drops to follow the path her fingers make up his arm, then slowly across his left pectoral. When her fingers brush along his collarbone, he releases a quick punch of breath.

“What are you doing?” he asks, his voice still that restrained, soft tone, but now with more of an edge.

In a tone almost distracted, Rey asks, “The other wolves you chased off that tried to attack me. They’re not… like you?”

“No. Those low breeds are nothing like me.”

Rey traces her fingers lower, down the dip between his pectorals. But when she reaches the ridges of his abs, his hand shoots up to circle her wrist. Rey jumps slightly, surprised by his quick movement.

When her eyes dart back up to his face, she finds his gaze glowering and heavy.

“You didn’t answer me. What exactly are you doing?”

“I’m…” Rey finds her mouth going dry, her lucid thoughts abandoning her, beneath the heat of his gaze and the searing warmth of his hand circling her wrist with the strength of an iron band.

She swallows, and says something entirely different.

“What is your name?”

His mouth falls open, his expression blank with surprise. He squeezes her wrist only slightly, just to see if it elicits a spark of fear in her eyes. None comes.

“My… name?”

“Yes. I’m Rey.” The sweet sound of her name spoken in her soft voice is like a balm. The whisper of cool water on a hot, parched day that seemed endless.

“I…” He hesitates. Rey watches as his brow furrows, as he appears for a moment something other than entirely calm. He seems, briefly, distraught.

Then, his voice rumbles out, soft and musing. “Hunters called me Kylo Ren. My pack took up the name, calling me Kylo for many years. But that’s not… not my true name.”

His fingers tighten slightly around her wrist again, but this time it’s because they tremble.

“Ben,” he breathes, the name foreign and desolate on his tongue. “Ben was my name. I had… nearly forgotten.”

His eyes find hers. In them, she sees something panicked, grateful, and so achingly human.

She breaks his loose hold around her wrist, in favor of lifting her hand to his face. His eyes look momentarily wild again before she touches him – a jumble of alarm, confusion, and a silent plea.

His cheek and jaw are just as smooth as she’d imagined. He shudders beneath her touch, breathing out in a messy rush as she strokes down the line of his scar.

“What is this from?” she asks in little above a whisper.

He answers in an equal tone of fragility. “When hunters came for my pack. One used a knife. I alone got away.”

“Ben,” she breathes, heart seizing with sympathy. Just how long has he roamed these woods alone?

“Rey,” he murmurs – a desperate, longing murmur that curls around her name like dark silk. He closes his eyes, jaw trembling as she strokes the line of his scar again. “Tell me who waits for you at home.”

“Hm?” she asks, her other hand resting on his chest now. It’s hard to make sense of much of anything, when he’s so close. Radiating warmth and so very beautiful…

“Tell me who waits for you to return. A family or a husband. That way I… I won’t be tempted to keep you here.”

Though now that he’s said the word, Ben finds the wolf within him fighting to release a growl at the thought of Rey going home to a husband. Ben usually tries to tamp down his more animalistic urges, but if there’s a man who gets to touch and kiss her and keep her for his own… Ben wants very much to rip his throat out.

But Rey simply smiles. A gentle but melancholy smile, as her hand lowers from his face to rest at his shoulder.

“Well. In that regard, I’m… like you. Maybe that’s why I’ve felt so drawn to you, ever since I saw your human face.”

“What do you mean, ‘like me’?”

“I’m an orphan. I don’t know where I come from, who my parents were, or even if they’re still alive. The villagers took me in and treated me well enough but… never like their own. I have no real family.”

That Rey has no family – no one to smile and embrace her when she returns to the village… it might be one of the worst things Ben has ever heard in his countless years.

“No one would really miss me,” Rey murmurs, musing aloud as her attention drifts back to Ben’s chest, her fingers resuming patterns there. “If I never came back.”

A rumble like a faint growl begins from deep in Ben’s chest. “That’s… dangerous talk, Rey.”

“Why?” she asks, blinking up at him. “You wouldn’t hurt me. I know it.”

He steps back from her, away from her touch. Rey looks at him in forlorn confusion.

“You don’t know what I’m capable of. The things I’ve done, the people I’ve killed.”

His voice sinks deeper, rasping like a blade across stone.

Rey looks at him – really looks. She takes in the strength in his wide shoulders, the brawn of muscles corded in his arms and chest. The body well capable of horrific violence. And then she takes in the gentleness wavering in his eyes, and chooses.

“I don’t think I care.”

His head lowers, glowering eyes still fixed upon her and neck arching in a movement sharply akin to his wolf form. Some of the gentleness leaves his eyes.

“Dangerous talk, Rey. Very dangerous.”

Another growl fills the spaces between his words.

“I can’t control myself forever. The longer you’re near me, the more the wolf in me hungers to keep you.”

Rey’s gaze falls to his hands – spread and flexed at his sides. They seem tensed, as if he’s holding in some great force fighting for release.

Perhaps she’s being incredibly, foolishly reckless. But common sense and the normal laws of nature abandoned her not long after she set out on tonight’s errand.

“What if that’s… what I want, too? What if I’d rather stay in these woods with you?”

Ben’s upper lip curls back. His shoulders hunch inward, as the steady growl from his chest rises in pitch and volume. Rey breathes hard, feeling the heat of his stare threatening to burn her where she stands.

She walks closer, into the flames.

“What would it take?” she whispers, knowing full well he’ll still hear despite the noise of his wolf. “To stay with you?”

This close, she can see his teeth have extended. His breathing approaches something akin to panting, as sharp canine teeth crowd his mouth.

And yet, his lips remain pink and soft looking. His eyes contain fear Rey can still recognize – the most abject depths of solitude she can still understand.

“Tell me what you would do,” she whispers, close enough now to almost feel the heat of his breath against her face. He is panting now, shoulders heaving, the fear in his eyes rising as he skims her face frantically. “If you let the wolf have its way.”

His jaw locks, teeth exposed in a grimace. He grinds out in a vicious vow, “I would never let the wolf have its way with you.”

“Then… what about _you_ , Ben?” Rey’s body thrums with the urge to touch him – to feel the heat of his massive, firm chest beneath her hands again. She resists, not wanting to risk upending the scale they’re both teetering at the very edge of. “What would you do with me?”

This question seems to calm him somewhat. The frantic edge in his eyes eases, as does the hunch of his shoulders. He straightens slightly, the growl receding as his eyes search her face again – searching for fear or resolution, Rey doesn’t know…

Then his gaze focuses upon her neck. Experimentally, Rey turns her head, tipping her head back slightly to expose her neck fully.

“There,” he breathes in a hush – his voice gentle again and so very reverent. “There – below your ear.”

Rey slowly lifts a hand towards where his eyes are fixed. Unsure, she moves her hair aside and touches her fingertips slowly to the bare skin of her throat, just below her ear.

She hears his breathing begin to quicken again, his pupils growing wide.

“Here?” she whispers, stroking the spot again.

“Yes,” he gasps. “I would… kiss you there.”

Rey’s head suddenly feels too light. The world seems a moment away from spinning.

“Kiss me?” she manages, faint.

“Yes. I would leave my scent. In the spot where wolves mate.”

Imagining his mouth against her skin – the idea of him _marking her_ in such a way… Rey’s head chooses this moment to overflow.

He’s there before she has barely tipped sideways. His hands are strong and so, so warm along her back and her arm. When he’s touching her, when she’s practically in his arms, all the animal ferocity that had lined his features seems to melt away.

“Rey.”

Her name is a tender breath, murmured from the lips of a boy.

“Kiss me.”

Ben is hot against her body as he leans down. One of his hands slides slowly along her waist, fingers spreading to hold her. She whimpers his name, as her hands grip his immovable shoulders.

He brushes her hair aside with the backs of his fingers. A deep, quaking sigh shakes loose from his core as he hovers above her skin, as her blissful scent fills him. A sigh of completion – of finding home.

“Kiss me,” Rey whispers, her fingers stroking his hair.

Ben lays his lips to her.

~

_Why are you here?_

It’s a different voice this time. One Ben knows from some distant dream, but will never put memory to.

He doesn’t know if they speak only to him. He doesn’t know if they send him these visions, or if he’s simply watching fragments of stardust drifting past from another place and time.

Ben closes his eyes – the blackness behind his eyelids barely a shade darker than all that surrounds him.

_She is alive, but long beyond my reach._

_Leave me in peace._

_Please._

~

A little girl’s wails sound from within the house in the clearing.

“No! Daddy stay!”

Ben leans down to gather his little daughter in his arms. Again.

“It’s just for the afternoon, sweetheart. I’ll be back by bedtime.”

“Last time you were gone three whole days!” The little girl waves three chubby fingers in the air accusingly.

“I know, honey. But this time I’m just going to get some supplies. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“You prooomise?”

“I promise.”

She scrunches up her face, still unsatisfied. “Will you miss me?”

“Oh, terribly. So I’ll have to get back before your bedtime.”

Rey emerges from the bedroom, a baby boy sleeping soundly in her arms.

“Why are you here still? You were supposed to leave an hour ago.” Then Rey notices her daughter’s pouting face. “Thalia,” she chides. “If you don’t let Daddy go into town, we won’t have any dinner tomorrow.”

The little girl looks almost convinced.

Ben bounces her in his arms a few times. “And I’ll bring you back a present, okay?”

The little girl’s face lights up. “A present?! Okay, Daddy can go!”

Ben laughs as she wriggles her way from his arms. She toddles over to Rey, watching her baby brother sleeping in her mother’s arms.

“Want to help me feed him later, Thalia?”

Eyes wide, Thalia nods excitedly. The baby is nearly a month old, but Thalia is no less fascinated by the newest and tiniest addition to the family.

Rey looks up as Ben draws close. Mindful not to disturb the baby, he presses a kiss to Rey’s cheek.

“I’ll be back by sundown.”

“You’re taking the speeder?”

“Of course.”

“And you have your saber, in case you run into those bandits?”

Even still, the weight of his family’s legacy blade feels strange at his hip. He rests a hand against the hilt and nods.

“Good. Now get in here and kiss me properly before you go.”

Bun chuckles as he feels Rey give him a slight, invisible tug towards her.

Leaning over their sleeping son, Ben kisses her carefully.

“I’ll be back to take you to bed tonight,” he murmurs. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

Rey hums against his lips, kisses him again. “That’s promises to both your girls, now. You better be sure to keep them.”

“I’d better, or she’d make me regret it.”

They look over together at their daughter, sitting in the middle of her toys and giggling as she makes her blocks hover in a circle around her head.

Ben sighs, even as his face is completely overtaken by pride. He murmurs to Rey, “She’s going to be a handful some day, isn’t she?”

Rey laughs. “She already is.”

Ben bends to kiss the top of his sleeping son’s head before he leaves. Outside, he climbs in the speeder and sets the coordinates for the nearest town and marketplace on Naboo.

Rey stands before the house, Thalia clinging to one of Rey’s legs and waving one of her little hands.

“Daddy! Don’t forget my present!”

Ben grins through the window at his wife and daughter, waving once as the speeder lifts off from the grass.

_How about a present for me, too?_

Rey’s fond, joking tone echoes in his mind. He can still see the glow of her smile, miles off the ground.

_Anything for you, my love._

~

At this vision of children – a family shared with the same version of Rey he once gave everything for, Ben begins to weep.

Entire stars are born and die, as tears coarse ceaselessly down his face.

He can still hear the children’s laughter – can still see Rey’s face, smiling at him in contented, fulfilled affection.

 _Why are you here?_ The voice asks again, cruel and taunting.

“I don’t know!” he cries into the nameless black. His own voice is swallowed up in the void, but now he cannot stop.

“You tell me why I’m trapped here!”

He has no power here. Not even his voice travels.

The weeping begins anew.

“Why?”

_“Why?”_

~

“Why are you here?”

Lord Ren’s voice seems to echo with excessive noise against the cloth-covered walls of his bedchamber. He makes every attempt to keep his voice steady and reserved.

He fails.

He is so shaken by the unexpected appearance of the young woman before him – he can barely speak.

From the window still ajar behind her, the chill of the night air blows in against her back. Dressed in only a simple frock and thin shoes, he can see her shiver even as her eyes remain a blaze of conviction.

“To see you alone.”

The footmen and servants filling the house would have blocked her way at every step. Even if she’d talked her way into being permitted an audience at this late hour, the whole house would know. The whispers would echo their every word.

So she’d climbed in his bedroom window. In only a simple frock and thin shoes.

The thought seems beyond imagining.

The Lord clambers from beneath the coverlets without a thought to his own state of disheveled nightclothes. Taking one of the thick blankets in hand from the foot of his bed, he crosses the room to her in three large steps.

Rey’s eyes don’t leave his face as he approaches and drapes the blanket around her shoulders, bringing the ends together at her chest to wrap her up completely.

The smoldering flames in the fireplace dance in soft shadows across their faces. One of Rey’s hands emerges from beneath the blanket to catch both of his – keeping his hands bundled against her where he holds the blanket closed.

“Lord Ren-”

Her voice is soft, yet his is still softer when he quickly appeals, “Ben. Please.”

Her mouth trembles silently for a moment. Her eyes seem to be turning to pools as she looks at him. Ben knows so keenly what he hopes to find there but cannot dare to entertain the notion.

“Ben.”

She only just barely breathes the name, and yet they both shiver in harmony. Her fingers tighten against his as his eyes trace the shape of the lips which just formed his name. As much as he has dreamed of those lips, he could never have imagined the sight of them rosy and wet in the firelight.

The room is empty save for the two of them, and Ben quickly realizes this is the first time they’ve ever been truly and entirely alone. Suddenly, the sound of their breathing seems to fill the air. The touch of her hands around his seems to grow warmer by the second. As firmly as he knows he should, he cannot bring himself to look away from her eyes and the consuming light there.

She is of – what some would call – low birth and station. She is a scullery maid not even in his own estate, but in the household of a Baron recently bequeathed lands by Lord Ren. Ben is an Earl from a line of longstanding nobility. A title-less woman found in his bedchambers would incur nothing upon his name. For her – it could cost much more than just her honor.

Before this moment, Ben never realized how very small she is. They’ve never stood so close. He realizes he has never felt the warmth of her skin without leather gloves between them.

They are alone. No one knows of her presence here, and she is perhaps a third his size and half his weight. Ben swallows tightly when enough of his wits return to recognize how very vulnerable she has made herself.

The trust she has placed in him, by coming here.

As if she can see right through him – see him remembering himself and common manners – she hurries to speak.

“I came because I have considered my choice, and I am sure.”

Stunned yet again, at first Ben can say nothing. He watches the play of firelight across her face, the flinty spark in her eyes. She squeezes his hands again, but still he dares not speak.

It seems an alternate world, an impossibility – the memory of what he asked of her.

“I came for your proposal.”

It had been an accident – the first time Ben stumbled into the kitchens in Baron Hux’s household. He claimed the same the second time. Rey had teased, “Shouldn’t a Lord have some measure of wits about him?” After that, Ben had stopped pretending.

To be sure, Hux had been surprised when Lord Ren suddenly began accepting all his invitations for dinners, soirees, and parties. So pleased by the honor of his frequent visits, Hux never questioned where Ben seemed to disappear off to.

Three nights ago, the kitchen staff had all flocked outside to join the garden party. Rey alone had remained in the kitchens, knowing Ben would find his way as he always did, down where Earls and Barons seldom tread.

Just outside the dark, cramped washrooms where she passed each day, she’d let laughter escape at Ben’s retelling of Hux’s simpering, lavish introductions between the gentry upstairs. She’d smiled at him as she thoughtlessly reached to brush back the strands of hair tumbling across his forehead. Smiled wider when she saw the shade of pink appearing in his face and the tips of his ears.

Then he’d looked from her face to her hands as she withdrew, and suddenly reached out to catch them. His glove-clad fingertips brushed gently across the dark calluses lining her palms. His body went rigid as his fingers froze over a blister still leaking blood.

She’d stopped smiling. Thinking him repulsed, she pulled her hands back, ready to turn her back rather than watch him leave.

Except he hadn’t let go. Instead, he’d stepped closer. Instead of leaving, he’d begun to speak.

Since then, neither of them had been able to occupy their thoughts with much of anything aside the words he’d spoken that night, in the shadows of an empty kitchen.

Finally, from the deep depths of his chest, burdened by his frantically pounding heart, Ben calls up his voice.

“Rey, please don’t think yourself obligated to answer. I realize it was… rash. I wouldn’t want you to feel burdened.”

“Are you… taking it back?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then you should be quiet, and let me say what I came here to say.” She flashes a mischievous smile, and she seems to twinkle in the firelight. Ben finds he can barely breathe. “You nobles are always talking too much.”

He huffs a laugh, and does as she asks. Without quite meaning to, he realizes his thumb has begun stroking the back of her hand of its own accord.

Her voice is soft and sincere, when she speaks. And yet, as ever, she speaks with the guileless clarity and confidence to which Ben has never heard an equal.

“I don’t want to be a Lady. I’d be no good at curtseying or being polite or eating at a dainty tea table. All those skirts would be far too heavy for my liking. I don’t want to be gossiped about or stared at everywhere I go. I want to live my life for me – seek my own happiness, and live in honesty.”

This crushing, sinking feel is… not quite humiliation, Ben thinks. Strangely, it stings like loss. As if the loss of something one never had can still carve a hole in his breast.

“I understand. If you wish for me to stop visiting you, you need only say as much.”

Hard as it always seemed for him to look away from her, now he can’t bring himself to glimpse her face as he moves to retract his hands.

She only holds them more fiercely between her own.

“Weren’t you listening, Ben?”

It’s the sound of his name that makes him look at her again. Spoken with an easy, familiar fondness he hasn’t heard since he was a child.

She is… smiling at him again, and Ben cannot reconcile the implication he thought he heard in her words with the affection that seems to reside in her expression.

“I want to live my own life, no matter what people think of me. I want to go where I’ll find happiness – wherever or with _whoever_ that may be.” She lifts his hands up to her face, her smile growing as she presses one of his palms to her cheek. Her other hand holds the blanket in place around her shoulders.

“Ben.” Very softly, she brushes a kiss into his palm, and Ben has trouble breathing once again. When she looks up at him, her eyes are dancing, joyous and tender. “I can’t be your Lady. But I do want to be yours.”

In his whole life, Ben has never been at such a loss. He thinks he understands what she’s expressing, but not why she’s smiling that brightly as she tells him.

“Rey,” he breathes, the words awkward and clumsy in his mouth. After all the countless nobles he has bantered, sparred, and done business with, why does all cleverness fail him when faced with her and these precarious, all-important moments?

“If you were only my mistress, I couldn’t take care of you the way I’d like. You’d be exposed to all the judgment and petty cruelty of the ton without the protection of my name and I don’t…”

“You really are thick sometimes, hm?”

No one else ever speaks to Ben that way. No one would dare. And it isn’t fair – how much he adores it coming from her lips. How it makes him want to keep making her laugh. He never wants to learn – he’d rather she keep taunting him for the rest of his days.

Rey lets go of his hands. He panics for a moment, utterly lost, until Rey steps close enough to place her hand against his cheek instead. When the blanket begins to slip, he catches it, lifts it over her shoulders again and makes sure it’s secure. Her thumb strokes across his cheek, and he’s lost in her eyes.

Her smile could blind him.

“I came to tell you my answer is yes. I will be your wife. I know the gentry and servants alike will be scandalized when they hear how far you’re marrying down. I’m sure plenty will accuse me of deceiving you somehow, and most will never like or approve of me. But none of that matters. I want to be your wife, Ben.”

Ben’s fingers tighten in the fabric of the blanket. He takes a very slow, very deliberate breath as he makes himself focus on bundling the two ends of the blanket together and tying them there. Her fingertips stroke his cheek again, and his breathing trembles.

“Are you… quite sure?”

“Completely. But there are a few things I must ask of you.”

She tips his chin up so he has no choice but to look into her eyes. His own are suspended somewhere between agonized disbelief and wondrous awe.

“I ask that you don’t expect me to put on the airs of a high-born Lady. I’m not one, and I’ll never be. I might never feel comfortable at your parties, or in fancy dresses, or meeting the King. I must ask that you don’t make me come to the first, promise you won’t mind if I don’t wear the second, and swear you’ll leave me at home if you ever meet the King.”

Inexplicably, Ben finds himself laughing – a chuckle that grows until it crinkles his eyes and the corners of his mouth.

“I swear I’d leave you at home if I ever meet the King.”

“I mean it,” Rey avers, voice firm even as her fingertips remain gentle along his face. “So don’t promise if you don’t mean it too.”

Ben’s hands reach out and slowly gather her to him. He watches her face cautiously at first, but when she dips her head to curl into him, he finally wraps her up tight against his chest – blanket and all. His lips brush her forehead, then her hair.

He has never held her like this before. Never felt how very small and warm she is, pressed against him. She seems to fit so well. Despite all the terrible things Ben full well knows will be said about them – he feels down to his toes that she belongs here. In his arms, in his bedchamber, in his home. And for all his titles, Ben has never felt so dedicated or fulfilled by any other cause: To keep Rey safe, happy, and cherished. To keep her hands soft, and make sure they never bleed again.

“I promise, Rey. It doesn’t matter what you wear; if you come to the parties and banquets or stay home; if you never hold or attend a single audience.” His arms tighten slightly around her, pulling her closer against himself. “Be my wife so you’ll never again be weary from labor. I swear I will take care of you – give you everything and anything you could ever want.”

“I just want you, Ben. I guess I’ll learn to live with all the rest.”

“I’m sorry my wealth and titles are such a burden for you,” he says dryly. She giggles against his chest, and before he knows it he’s smiling into her hair.

Rey shifts against him. Ben loosens his hold enough for her to draw back and look up into his face.

“Is there…” She bites her lip, gaze skipping away from his face for a moment. Ben has never seen her anything near shy since the first time they met, when she realized who he was. She goes on, voice softly entreating, “Is there… something else?”

Ben takes in the sight of her lip wedged between her teeth, the way she won’t quite meet his eyes, the way she seems unsure for the first time since climbing in through his window.

Thick as he may be, he thinks he understands.

He moves a hand to cradle her cheek, gently lifting her head to meet his eyes. He strokes the side of her face, his gaze skipping back and forth between her eyes until, finally, his courage grows.

“Be my wife so I may love you. For the rest of our days.”

She blinks at him, the pools of her eyes glimmering so deeply Ben swears he could drown there. And then her face alights, pure sunshine streaming from her overflowing smile.

“Yes.”

Before Ben even sees her move, her arms break free from the blanket to circle his neck and pull him down to her – right into a long, bold kiss of decision and eagerness.

In a hurried, ungraceful rush, Ben drags her close again. His wide hands roam her back, his lips sliding across hers as he tastes everything he never knew he wanted or needed, but suddenly can’t live without.

The blanket falls. By the time Rey pulls back from the lips of her future husband, Ben has started rubbing his hands up and down her sides in a reflexive attempt to warm her.

His eyes are bright and wondrous as he gazes at her; those full lips she has adored since the first time they met are parted with heavy breaths. Already, his large hands moving back and forth across her body warms her in a way she doesn’t think he intended.

“Ben?”

“Yes, my darling?”

“I _am_ a bit cold.”

She sees his eyes dart towards the blanket at their feet, but shakes her head, her lips turning up in that mischievous smile Ben loves so well.

“If you haven’t noticed - it is a harsh winter night and I have snuck into your bedchamber. Perhaps I… would like to share a Lord’s bed.”

Ben’s answering smile is amused and gentle.

“I’m afraid the Lord only takes his wife to bed.”

“Well. Lucky then that I happen to be his betrothed.”

Ben’s arms come to circle her again, in anticipation of sweeping her up from the floor. He knows this is highly improper, to even think of sharing his bed before she wears his ring. But nothing about this is at all conventional, let alone proper. And Ben wouldn’t change a thing.

“Lucky indeed.”

~

Ben doesn’t believe it. There has been nothing – _nothing_ for what has seemed eternity. And now…

His voice is a whisper, weak from disuse and terrified of deceit. He cannot bear another vision.

“Why are you here?”

Rey merely blinks at him. As if this is the single most useless question she’s ever heard.

She is dressed in white and grey. Not the same as when they stood before Palpatine together, but he knows, _instantly_ , that she is his.

His own.

“I think you know,” she says, voice gentle but still with that teasing lilt to her words. “I think you know you called me.”

Ben is speechless – too stunned and disbelieving of her presence to even consider how anything he experienced in this oblivion might have reached her.

He realizes, very quickly, that it doesn’t matter. None of it does. The darkness is filling – the light of one sun at a time.

Rey beams. She holds out her hand to him, palm open and fingers extended.

“I’m here to bring you home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks very much for reading! This is the first piece I've really been able to dig into and write all the way through since TROS, and it felt wonderful. Please let me know whether all the different pieces worked and which was your favorite! Which you perhaps want to see more of? I grew attached to all these mini AU scenes rather quickly...
> 
> I'm hoping to carry this momentum straight through into some serious headway on the next/final chapter of my WIP [Love It If We Made It.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19841884/chapters/46984972) I absolutely promise it will be completed soon!
> 
> My [tumblr's](https://xoruffitup.tumblr.com/) here!  
> And I finallyyy made a [twitter!](https://twitter.com/xoruffitup)


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